After the female Knight woke up, she checked the time. She had already slept for half an hour-she really was exhausted.
She looked out the vehicle window again. The youngster was packing up his traps, while Luo Xi walked out of the room looking full of energy.
Hadn't he said he would rest for an hour? She stuck her head out and asked, "Time's not up yet, is it?"
"Something's off," Luo Xi said, not minding telling her the truth.
Wu Youren had forcibly woken him up, so he could hardly be called energetic, but he was already much better. "We need to run."
At that, the female Knight fixed her gaze on the boy. "Are you sure they've caught up?"
"I trust him," Luo Xi answered bluntly. "As for you... suit yourselves!"
As a Knight, who would trust a Knight Apprentice for no reason?
But at this moment, he had no other choice. He would rather it be a false alarm than take any risks.
Besides, the casualties the Intelligence Agency had suffered earlier were certainly real.
"We're leaving too." The female Knight had also recovered some of her energy. "Hurry and wake everyone up."
Fortunately, the Intelligence Agency personnel were all well trained, and they were ready to leave in less than a minute.
Wu Youren had finished packing by now. He discarded whatever traps needed discarding and only packed away those that could be reused.
Luo Xi started the motorcycle and rode onto the road. He had barely opened the throttle when the boy behind him poked him in the lower back.
Wu Youren raised a hand and pointed. "Don't ride on the road. That way!"
He was pointing not straight down the road, but diagonally ahead, at an angle of almost forty-five degrees.
"Fuck," Luo Xi exclaimed, opening the throttle and driving off the road-thank goodness he wasn't driving something with four wheels.
"Hey!" The female Knight poked her head out of the vehicle behind them. "What's going on?"
"It's not safe up ahead," Luo Xi shouted back. "Try it yourselves if you don't believe me!"
"Follow them," the female Knight ordered through gritted teeth.
Someone beside her looked stunned. "That's open country. It'll be rough going!"
The Intelligence Agency's vehicles had decent off-road capabilities, but leaving a perfectly good road unused-wasn't that asking for punishment?
The female Knight answered expressionlessly, "Follow them if you want to live."
"But is the route they've chosen necessarily right?"
"At least neither of them has been killed or wounded. You work in intelligence, and you can't even manage that much analysis?"
"It's mainly the vehicles... sigh, it's always a bit troublesome."
"A bumpy ride is better than losing your life, isn't it?"
Two motorcycles and two vehicles, one of them a minibus, charged madly across the wilderness, jolting and bouncing...
The dark clouds overhead thickened, and a biting chill filled the fine drizzle around them.
After charging ahead for over half an hour, the three-wheeler reached a small road, then raced along it.
"It's much smoother, at least, but... isn't this heading toward Skeleton Wharf?"
At the same time, Luo Xi was also asking, "This is quite a way off our original direction. Are we going around the back of the Rust Zone?"
"Just keep running for now," Wu Youren answered with a yawn. "If you don't believe me, drop me off and go your own way."
He was terribly sleepy, but there was nothing he could do. The hairs on his back were standing on end!
Unfortunately, the boy in white was already unconscious. Otherwise, he would have liked to see how the other boy would assess his current choice.
"Cut that crap," Luo Xi said bluntly. "Are we... surrounded by the Weird Race, and this is the opening?"
"I really don't know." Wu Youren's head kept bumping against Luo Xi's back. "I just feel we should go this way."
After traveling more than twenty kilometers, they left the small road again and raced across the wilderness.
Luckily, it was late spring and early summer, and the shrubs and wild grass had yet to grow wild. Otherwise, riding a motorcycle might not have been any faster than walking!
Another two hours passed before they finally reached a main road. They continued racing along it and finally stopped half an hour later.
"Fuck, any farther and we'll be back at the martial academy," Luo Xi said after getting off, first rubbing his backside. "My ass nearly got bounced into eight pieces."
The convoy stopped right behind them. "Are we safe?"
"Doesn't matter if we aren't." Luo Xi took off his helmet. "Worst comes to worst, we'll go back to Red Pine!"
The female Knight got out again, this time looking at Wu Youren. "How could you tell there was less weird qi in this direction?"
"Is there really less?" The boy looked utterly bleary, answering between yawns. "I'm sleepy to death. I can't sense anything!"
"Then why did you choose this direction?" The female Knight had been observing him for a long time.
The vehicles had jolted terribly, but the worse the jolting, the more closely she had watched.
"It felt safe this way." Wu Youren opened his mouth wide. "Haaah..."
"Haaah..." Yawns really were contagious. The female Knight answered with a yawn, "So the ability you awakened... is foresight?"
"What awakening?" Wu Youren kept yawning.
As he quickly pitched a simple tent beside the road, he answered, "I don't have those abilities."
It took him only a little over a minute to pitch the tent. He crawled straight inside, and a dozen seconds later, loud snores rang out.
The female Knight looked at Luo Xi. "We're already very close to Red Pine. Aren't you going back to rest and recuperate?"
"We're not that delicate," Luo Xi answered, thinking that if he returned to the martial academy, getting out again would involve more complications.
He looked around, found a tree with a trunk as thick as a bowl's mouth, and sat down against it to doze.
Seeing this, the female Knight yawned and ordered someone to drive the minibus away, getting the wounded to medical care promptly.
She herself stayed behind with an off-road vehicle, a motorcycle, and four martial artists.
She chose another tree and also sat against it to doze, though her mouth stayed busy. "Has this youngster really not awakened?"
"I haven't heard anything about it," Luo Xi answered languidly, his voice feeble.
Wu Youren slept for a full three hours before waking up.
As a martial artist, this ability to sleep was something he had to train. There was little more to say about it.
Three hours of deep sleep swept away all his fatigue, and he switched shifts with Luo Xi, letting him sleep in the tent.
The female Knight had also rested enough. This time, she directly asked the boy what his name was.
Wu Youren shook his head. "You can ask Instructor Hong Yan, ma'am. Please forgive me, but I can't answer."
The female Knight did not mind. "Tell me, how do you sense weird qi?"
"If there's a possibility of awakening, we're willing to invest too."
"I suppose I was born with a poor sense of security," Wu Youren said. He did not dare refuse to answer, but he would not say too much either.
"Could the Weird Race follow us here?" the female Knight asked again.
This place was not far from Red Pine, but there was still some distance between them, and it was out in the wilderness.
"We'll have to wait until tonight to see." Wu Youren sat cross-legged, circulating his internal breath, and answered casually, "I don't feel any danger at the moment."
Just then, the female Knight's communicator watch vibrated, and she walked aside to speak to the person on the other end.
A few minutes later, she returned, her expression somewhat grave.
She told the four people on her side to seize the time to rest. The mission to investigate Suotu Town was not over.
A team would arrive later to support them. As the first wave of investigators, they had to cooperate with the reinforcements.
Toward evening, Luo Xi woke up, left behind some food and equipment, and rode off alone on his motorcycle.
He needed to take the Monkey Tiger head, along with its sharp claws and tendons harvested earlier, back to the martial academy for processing.
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